Clifford Simak - Grotto of the Dancing Deer - And Other Stories

I went out to the car.

“It took you long enough,” Doc said irritably.

“It took a lot of talking for Wilbur to agree,” I said.

“But he did agree?”

“Yeah, he agreed.”

“Well, then,” said Doc, “what are we waiting for?”

“Ten thousand bucks,” I said.

“Ten thousand …”

“That’s the price for Wilbur. I’m selling you my alien.”

“Your alien! He is not your alien!”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but he’s the next best thing. All I have to do is say the word and he won’t go with you.”

“Two thousand,” declared Doc. “That’s every cent I’ll pay.”

We got down to haggling and we would up at seven thousand dollars. If I’d been willing to spend all night at it, I would have got eighty-five hundred. But I was all fagged out and I needed a drink much worse than I needed fifteen hundred extra dollars. So we settled on the seven.

We went back into the house and Doc wrote out a check.

“You know you’re fired, of course,” he said, handing it to me.

“I hadn’t thought about it,” I told him, and I hadn’t. The check for seven thousand in my hand and that roll of hundred-dollar bills bulging out my pocket added up to a lot of drinking money.

I went to the bedroom door and called out Wilbur and Lester and I said to them: “Old Doc here has made up his mind to take you.”

And Wilbur said, “I am so happy and so thankful. Was it hard, perhaps, to get him to agree to take us?”

“Not too hard,” I said. “He was reasonable.”

“Hey,” yelled Doc, with murder in his eyes, “what is going on here?”

“Not a thing,” I said.

“Well, it sounds to me …”

“There’s your boy,” I said. “Take him if you want him. If it should happen you don’t want him, I’ll be glad to keep him. There’ll be someone else along.”

And I held out the check to give it back to him. It was a risky thing to do, but I was in a spot where I had to bluff.

Doc waved the check away, but he was still suspicious that he was being taken, although he wasn’t sure exactly how. But he couldn’t take the chance of losing out on Wilbur. I could see that he had it all figured out—how he’d become world famous with the only alien psychiatrist in captivity.

Except there was one thing that he didn’t know. He had no idea that in just a little while there would be other Wilburs. And I stood there, laughing at him without showing it, while he herded Wilbur and Lester out the door.

Before he left, he turned back to me.

“There is something going on,” he said, “and when I find out about it, I am going to come back and take you apart for it.”

I never said a word, but just stood there listening to the three of them crunching down the driveway. When I heard the car leave, I went out into the kitchen and took down the bottle.

I had a half a dozen fast ones. Then I sat down in a chair at the kitchen table and practiced some restraint. I had a half a dozen slow ones.

I got to wondering about the other Wilburs that Jake had agreed to send to Earth and I wished I’d been able to pin him down a bit. But I had had no chance, for he had jumped up and disappeared just when I was ready to get down to business.

All I could do was hope he’d deliver them to me—either in the front yard or out in the driveway—but he’d never said he would. A fat lot of good it would do me if he just dropped them anywhere.

And I wondered when he would deliver them and how many there might be. It might take a bit of time, for more than likely he would indoctrinate them before they were dropped on Earth, and as to number, I had not the least idea. From the way he talked, there might even be a couple of dozen of them. With that many, a man could make a roll of cash if he handled the situation right.

Although, it seemed to me, I had a right smart amount of money now.

I dug the roll of hundred-dollar bills out of my pocket and made a stab at counting them, but for the life of me I couldn’t keep the figures straight.

Here I was drunk and it wasn’t even Saturday, but Sunday. I didn’t have a job and now I could get drunk any time I wanted.

So I sat there working on the jug and finally passed out.

There was an awful racket and I came awake and wondered where I was. In a little while I got it figured out that I’d been sleeping at the kitchen table and I had a terrible crick in my neck and a hangover that was even worse.

I stumbled to my feet and looked at the clock. It was ten minutes after nine.

The racket kept right on.

I made it out to the living room and opened the front door. The Widow Frye almost fell into the room, she had been hammering on the door so hard.

“Samuel,” she gasped, “have you heard about it?”

“I ain’t heard a thing,” I told her, “except you pounding on the door.”

“It’s on the radio.”

“You know darn well I ain’t got no radio nor no telephone nor no TV set. I ain’t got no time for modern trash like that.”

“It’s about the aliens,” she said. “Like the one you have. The nice, kind, understanding alien people. They are everywhere. Everywhere on Earth. There are a lot of them all over. Thousands of them. Maybe millions …”

I pushed past her out the door.

They were sitting on front steps all up and down the street, and they were walking up and down the road, and there were a bunch of them playing, chasing one another, in a vacant lot.

“It’s like that everywhere!” cried the Widow Frye. “The radio just said so. There are enough of them so that everyone on Earth can have one of their very own. Isn’t it wonderful?”

That dirty, doublecrossing Jake, I told myself. Talking like there weren’t many of them, pretending that his culture was so civilized and so well adjusted that there were almost no psychopaths.

Although, to be fair about it, he hadn’t said how many there might be of them—not in numbers, that is. And even all he had dumped on Earth might be a few in relation to the total population of his particular culture.

And then, suddenly, I thought of something else.

I hauled out my watch and looked at it. It was only a quarter after nine.

“Widow Frye,” I said, “excuse me. I got an errand to run.”

I legged it down the street as fast as I could.

One of the Wilburs detached himself from a group of them and loped along with me.

“Mister,” he said, “have you got some troubles to tell me?”

“Naw,” I said. “I never have no troubles.”

“Not even any worries?”

“No worries, either.”

Then it occurred to me that there was a worry—not for me alone, but for the entire world.

For with all the Wilburs that Jake had dumped on Earth, there would in a little while be no human psychopaths. There wouldn’t be a human with a worry or a trouble. God, would it be dull!

But I didn’t worry none.

I just loped along as fast as I could go.

I had to get to the bank before Doc had time to stop payment on that check for seven thousand dollars.

Street & Smith Publications paid Clifford Simak $120 for “Hunger Death.” It appeared in the October 1938 issue of Astounding Science Fiction . The story continues several themes of the author’s earliest fiction, including a Mars inhabited by more than one race of intelligent beings, the Earthian newspaper known as the Evening Rocket, its editor, and its sports editor. But those veins were playing out. …

Old Doc Trowbridge was napping in his office, with his feet on the desk and an empty bocca bottle on the floor beside him. Angus MacDonald, New Chicago’s marshal, shook him gently. Doc opened one eye and stared at Angus in mild reproach.